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Chapter 4
Mapping the DiscursiveTerrain: Part 1
4.1 Introduction
Together with Chapter Five, which examines international education in Britain and the United
States, this chapter on the Australian terrain of international education, provides the
discursive background from which to situate the micropractices of promotion which will form
the basis of the Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine. I explore the different meanings surrounding
international education by analysing Australian public discourses, which I take to be policy,
academic and media texts. I examine the different interpretations of international education
made by each of these texts – the public ‘truths’ they produce and circulate about international
eduction and international students. These ‘truths’ provide the discursive grounding from
which to understand how the power relations which inform international education, are
associated with contemporary processes of globalisation. More specifically, I examine how
nation-state instrumentalities are interpreting and negotiating the myriad forces and
processes of globalisation, through their international education policies and practices. These
public truths also provide a grid against which to re-imagine how international education
may be reconfigured to ‘fit’ with a more globalised world, a topic that I discuss in the final
chapter of this thesis.
In a globalising environment, national dimensions of higher education are frequently
referenced against global trends, indicators and benchmarks. Governments frequently invoke
‘globalisation’ and ‘international competition’ as the rationale for their selective borrowing of
policy initiatives. So too do universities and educational brokers, both of which routinely
undertake research to inquire into the marketing innovations of international competitors. In
the previous chapter I noted that globalisation is conceptually contested and that different
discourses accord different emphases to the material, cognitive and socio-temporal
dimensions of globalisation. Globalization thus presents the possibilities of several types of
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engagements with other national contexts, ostensibly both superficial and deep (Marginson
and Mollis, 2000, p. 53). Making international comparisons to establish potentially useful
borrowings, requires in the first instance, ‘a situated’ understanding of policy, that is, an
understanding of the conditions of emergence and existence of policies in their different
national contexts.
The language within policy statements, the meanings they communicate and the knowledge
they constitute, are indicative of what is ‘sayable’ in the terrain of government. Policies are
part of an ‘intellectual machinery’. They link the concerns of government and institutional
practices with the individual behaviours of the worker-subject (see Rose, 1993, p. 289, also
Marginson, 1997b, xiii). As I explained in Chapter Two, effective governance in globalised
times requires mobilizing the productive imperatives of capillary power. In other words,
individuals are encouraged to employ particular technologies of self, so that they will
self-steer towards particular subject positions. Similarly, in institutional settings policy
discourses are central to understanding the exercise of influence and power. They embody
meaning by shaping what can and cannot be said and done; who can speak, with what
authority and under what circumstances. Thus, “policies create circumstances in which the
range of options available in deciding what to do, are narrowed or changed” (Ball, 1994, p. 12).
Describing policy making as “a process of bricolage” and policies as “ramshackle,
compromise and hit and miss affairs”, Ball (1998, p. 126), alerts us to the power relations
underpinning policy production and dissemination. Within the context of higher education,
policies have a role not only in producing and sustaining institutional practices, but also in
constituting the subjectivities of staff and students.
However, policy discourses are not the sole sources of meaning and knowledge about
international education. Academic discourses, what is sayable in discussion papers, research
papers and conference proceedings also shape knowledges about international education.
Academic texts are powerful instruments in shaping academic ‘realities’ including academic
subjectivities and ‘academic commonsense’ about international students and
internationalisation. They also have the potential to influence the experiences that
international students have at universities.
Along with policy and academic texts, media discourses about international students and
international education also shape the meanings we attribute to ‘international education’.
Media discourses offer valuable insights into how power is embodied in, and through, people
and institutions. They are part of what Law and Hetherington (2000, pp. 35-36) describe as
‘networks of heterogeneous materialities’, ‘things’ which collectively define the complex
social world surrounding the production and consumption of international education. Media
discourses are also useful in highlighting any competing discourses which may influence
what is visible and sayable about international education.
This chapter does not seek to undertake an exhaustive analysis of key Australian higher
education policies. Such a herculean task clearly exceeds the scope of this thesis, which is
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concerned with the micropractices of promotion used by the six universities featured in this
study. Instead, this chapter offers a selective snapshot of the key policy developments in
Australia which have influenced the policies and practices of internationalisation. Similarly, I
do not undertake an exhaustive analysis of all the public discourses which constitute the field
that is ‘international education’. In keeping with archaeology, my concern is not with issues
of ‘representative-ness’ but with mapping ‘what is visible and sayable’. This allows me to limit
my analysis to particular policies, media texts and academic papers.
This chapter first, describes and analyses selective supranational and national policies that
have shaped the discursive field that is ‘international education’ in Australia. It identifies
defining themes, issues and rationales, that is, the visible ‘objects’ of discourse, and their fields
of emergence. It also identifies the key authorities responsible for legitimising particular
interpretations and expressions of internationalisation. Second, it examines academic and
media discourses which comment on international education and international students.
Together, these public discourses (policy, academic and media), their fields of emergence and
the authoritative bodies which institutionalise them, establish the basis for identifying the
power/knowledge constellations underpinning international education.
Given that all three producer countries that are the focus of my study are members of the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and especially given its
role in shaping the internationalisation agenda in higher education, the next section describes
the OECD’s contribution to the internationalisation debates. Using archaeology, I examine
statements from key OECD monographs on internationalisation to reveal the types of subject
positions produced and sustained by its interpretations of internationalisation.
4.2 The OECD and Internationalisation
Established as an international think-tank in 1961, the OECD’s declared aims are to contribute
to the world-wide development of market economies, multilateral world trade, and pluralistic
democracies (Henry, Lingard, Rizvi and Taylor, 2001, p.8). Since its inception, the OECD has
provided an extensive commentary on the financing and governance of the public sectors of
its various member countries, including the higher education sector, whose role the OECD
sees as critical in supporting the development of a global capitalist economy. Its diverse
membership expresses itself in ideologically variable approaches to education policy. A
largely European social democratic strand coexists with a neoliberal Anglo-American
membership (Lingard, 1997; Henry et al., 2001, pp. 8-9).
Henry et al. (2001) have provided an authoritative and detailed account of how the OECD
functions not just as a forum for discussion of ideas, but also as a policy actor. It actively steers
the production of policy through a series of discursive interventions, and in this regard, it acts
as “an agent of anticipatory convergence” (p. 128). The writing and language in OECD reports
is instructive and illustrative of a ‘degree zero’ style. Although appearing ‘objective’, general,
and impartial, it is a style that allows for the surreptitious inclusion of normative
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interpretations and stances, which represent the OECD’s ideological position (ibid, p. 14, 145).
The OECD’s discursive interventions in the internationalisation debates did more than simply
report on and describe the discussions between its members. Through a series of discursive
manoeuvres, it occluded the ambivalences and differences between its numerous
stakeholders, and arrived at a normative definition which effectively grafted the
internationalisation agenda to a restrictive definition of globalisation. The OECD took the
ostensible position that the diversity of meanings and interpretations of internationalisation
“may lead to a weakened overall sense of legitimacy and impact” (Knight and de Wit, 1995, p.
28). It was against this backdrop, that the OECD arrived at following definition of
internationalisation:
..the process of integrating an international/intercultural dimension into the teaching,
research and service of an institution (ibid, p. 15)
International curricula was defined as:
Curricula with an international orientation in content, aimed at preparing students for
performing (professionally/socially) in an international and multicultural context and
designed for domestic students as well as foreign students (ibid).
Both these definitions were sufficiently general to appear to accommodate the divergent
perspectives held on internationalisation by OECD stakeholders. A close reading of both
definitions reveals the ambiguity surrounded the agent responsible for driving the ‘process of
integrating an international/intercultural dimension into the functions of universities. Would
it be the state? Or the ‘market’? Clients? Funding authorities? Also occluded are the power/
knowledge configurations underpinning what constitutes ‘curricula with an international
orientation’.
European member states had interpreted internationalisation as a set of processes aimed at
increasing staff and student mobility. Conscious of the significant diversity within their
systems – the Humboldtian and Napoleonic traditions in Northern and Southern Europe,
together with the very significant educational diversity in Central and Eastern Europe –
European stakeholders did not seek a singular definition of internationalisation, nor a
standard evaluative framework to inform and monitor institutional processes of
internationalization. The ensuing OECD monographs on the other hand, called for a “mobility
of ideas” and methodologies to monitor the mobility of ideas and programmes (de Wit, 1995,
p. 2). The implicit assumption here was that the mobility of ideas would occur by natural
osmosis, undeterred by relations of power.
The OECD acknowledged that the consensus on internationalisation held by member states
was frail, and furthermore, that its progress could be unsettled by “isolationism, racism and
monoculturalism” (Knight and de Wit, 1995, p. 29). However, it did not offer any suggestions
on keeping these developments at bay, aside from highlighting the importance of sponsoring
research into internationalisation. The report endorsed a systemic approach to the task of
internationalisation, identifying strong and innovative leadership, staff involvement and
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access to resources preferably reinforced by national budget allocations. It said little about
how these outcomes were to be achieved in light of the fiscal restraints facing universities (de
Wit, 1995, pp. 25-29, see also Kameoka, 1996, p. 36).
After a detailed analysis of reports, guidelines and case studies, Henry and her colleagues
concluded that the OECD’s preferred definition of internationalisation expressed its
ideological commitment to market liberalism (neoliberalism). Although both economic and
cultural dimensions of internationalisation had been acknowledged, the OECD’s rationale for
internationalisation was expressed in terms of credentializing graduates with the
instrumental skills to work in an economy without borders (Knight and de Wit, 1995, pp.
13-14). It was this philosophy which were subsequently adopted by the Australian
Vice-Chancellor’s Committee (AVCC) (Henry et al., 2001, p. 147).
A series of case studies published by the OECD sought to describe ‘best practice’ in
internationalisation. They are part of a discursive ensemble which normalized
internationalisation and as such are worth analysing. I will restrict my comments to the
Australian case study which was based on an institutional audit of internationalisation
strategies in place in Australian universities. First, the choice of researcher merits some
comment. The audit was conducted by IDP Education and financed by the Department of
Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA). IDP functions as a ‘broker’ of
international educational services. It promotes and recruits international students for
Australian universities, manages international development projects and conducts market
research on a fee for service basis for public and private sector institutions (IDP, 2002).
Based on this institutional audit, Australia’s internationalisation policy was lauded as highly
successful and some 1011 internationalisation initiatives were noted to be in place in
Australian universities. A close reading of the Australian audit however, reveals that it did not
formally sample the opinions of international students. This is a significant omission given the
dominance of the international education export industry in Australian expressions of
international education. By contrast, interviews with university staff were largely
concentrated at the senior levels (Vice-Chancellors, Pro-Vice Chancellors, Deans, Heads of
International Offices and Departments). In another publication, the authors acknowledged
that their study did not evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of university
internationalisation strategies, arguing that this was not part of the terms of reference, a
curious omission given the study’s intention to document best practice (see Back, Davis and
Olsen, 1996, p. 108). A significant and powerful exclusion is also mirrored in the study’s failure
to state the audit’s methodological limitations in the OECD reports.
Thus far, I have discussed how the OECD’s role as a policy actor as been pivotal in setting the
agenda for internationalisation in higher education systems. My next task is to examine the
OECD’s rationales for internationalisation, to ascertain the subject positions that these
rationales are premised on, and the subjectivities that they perpetuate. I first describe and
analyse the OECD’s rationales before moving onto an analysis of subject-formation processes.
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4.2.1 Establishing ‘objects’ of policy and shaping subjectivities
A major and decisive report which established the terms of the internationalisation debate was
the 1995 OECD report, titled Strategies for internationalisation of higher education: A comparative
study of Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States of America. In describing stakeholder
rationales1 for internationalisation, the report categorized rationales into two broad clusters:
economic /political rationales, and cultural/educational rationales (Knight and de Wit, 1995,
pp. 9-10).
The economic rationales for the internationalisation of education were grounded in their
perceived contribution towards greater economic growth. Short-term commercial benefits
were anticipated to arise from the recruitment of international students and by selling
international education advisory services, while longer-term benefits were anticipated when
returning graduates favoured the provider (host) country in the purchase of goods and
services. Another anticipated economic benefit was attributable to the individual who, having
obtained an internationally recognised credential, would be able to participate in the global
labour market. Here, the notion of a global labour market is discursively constructed as ‘real’
with no hints of its selective permeability which would provide access to some and not others.
The relative importance given to commercial goals of internationalisation varied across
member nations, notably:
...from the North American regional perspective...economic and trade motivations are
becoming more important and higher educational institutions must be more responsive
to these issues...Survival of some higher education institutions may require that they
attempt to serve the economic and diplomatic purposes of their national government
and regions (OECD, 1996,p.11)
While there was acknowledgement of the need to balance “economic internationalism” with
“the internationalism of values and understanding”, there were no suggestions on ways of
reconciling the tensions of narrow utilitarianism and pecuniary interests, with broader
humanitarian goals including intercultural goodwill (p.11).
The political rationales for internationalisation for member countries were strongly
nation-centred and above all premised on fixed notions of national interests. Educational
cooperation thought to arise from internationalisation initiatives was viewed as “a form of
diplomatic investment...it has the potential to increase knowledge and sympathy of the host
country’s political system, culture and values” (p.11). Here, an older colonial discourse
resonant with the Colombo Plan, constructs international education as a ‘gift’ aimed at
cultivating and consolidating the influence of the ‘host country’ by influencing local elites. In
language which produces ideations of hospitality, exemplified by words like ‘host country’,
these rationales carry no traces of the brutal coercions of colonial and superpower struggles.
1. A number of stakeholders were consulted, including governments at the international, national and regional levels, the private sector, institutions, academic staff (faculty) and students.
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By contrast, an archaeological reading of these statements identifies a discursive logic which
resonates with the colonizing and imperializing persuasions of an earlier era where
cultivation of local elites was key to legitimating control.
The OECD’s investigation of internationalisation rationales among Asia-Pacific countries,
identified these rationales with the desire to preserve national and ethnocultural identities.
Internationalisation was perceived as a means to increase competitiveness in the arena of
international trade, and by extension, enable many of these former colonies, to engage with
the broader global polity on more equal terms. For example, internationalisation was
associated with establishing the intellectual means for the Asia-Pacific states to develop an
advanced technological capacity, to enable ‘technological leapfrogging’ (see Vervoorn, 1998,
p. 117). Countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Japan were reported to view
internationalisation as a means towards building an export industry in education. By
establishing their credentials as equal partners in the global trade arena, the countries of the
Asia-Pacific would be better able to manage the globalising tendencies of westernised cultural
forms (de Wit, 1997, pp. 23-27). Similarly, academic rationales for internationalisation in the
Asia-Pacific countries were seamlessly linked with political and economic discourses. Thus,
internationalisation was noted as the means to achieving standardization of ‘quality’ vis-a-vis
international institutions, which would improve competitiveness.
An archaeological reading of the statements within these rationales, places
internationalisation within the discursive domain of modernization. The discursive logic
inherent in these statements can be interpreted along these lines:
internationalise = increase intellectual, economic and technological capacities =
equalise existing power differentials between postcolonial states and former colonial
powers = offset hegemonic power of westernised cultural forms + enable the
preservation of ethnocultural and national identities.
Underpinning these rationales for internationalisation rationales is a political and discursive
reasoning which hearkens back to colonial and capitalist modernity, except the vogue term for
this historical moment, is internationalisation and not modernisation.
Another of the political rationales to emerge from OECD monographs identified
internationalisation with social stability in those consumer (sending) nations with insufficient
educational infrastructure and high levels of domestic demand. Internationalisation
initiatives, it was argued, would remove political pressures on some governments to channel
more resources into providing in-country facilities (de Wit, 1995, p. 12)2.
Cultural arguments for internationalisation were framed in language which reflected both
imperial and internationalist persuasions. The desire to “export...national and cultural and
moral values”, had a particularly strong resonance in French and American rationales for
2. Greece, Norway, the countries of Central Europe, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong were listed for mention.
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internationalisation (Knight and de Wit, 1995, p.12). As with the political rationales discussed
earlier, cultural rationales for internationalisation were also embedded in older colonial and
imperial texts. Admittedly, a second and less parochial, educational rationale for
internationalisation was also expressed: to expand the learning and development
opportunities of individuals, increase intercultural knowledge, skills and research and
provide an international dimension to research and teaching and in doing so improve the
quality of education and research (ibid, p. 12). To this end, internationalisation was
constructed as delivering a broader public good (p.13).
Although a welcome departure from the imperialising assumptions underpinning the ‘export’
of national and cultural values, this second rationale fails to acknowledge that cultural
engagements which seek to forge collaborations and build interdependent transcultural
networks are not power-neutral. As potential sites for intercultural engagements, education
systems are themselves materially and discursively embedded in power/knowledge
structures. Their role in the development, transmission and reception of international and
intercultural knowledges are shaped by a series of power relations. An important omission
here is the failure to identify internationalisation with the ability to think reflexively and
critically about the production and reproduction of knowledge (Henry et al., p. 153).
Having described and analysed the OECD’s cultural, economic, political and academic
rationales for internationalisation, it is timely to examine the subject-formation processes at
work through these rationales. Three subject positions can be identified. First, the
subject-positions of imperial educator and colonial ‘other’. As a diplomatic investment,
internationalisation is intended to cultivate a loyal indigenous elite which will favour the ‘host
country’.
The second subject-position produced by OECD discourse is the autonomous, self-sufficient
and responsible consumer whose investments in international education are driven by a
desire to be competitive in the global job market. By implication, such an individual holds no
expectation of his/her rights as a citizen to be provided with a quality education by the state.
Instead this subject is impelled to take personal responsibility for educating herself. By
extension, consumer (home) governments have no responsibilities for direct provision of
higher education. Both the political and economic rationales thus, reveal subjectification
processes which work to transform the citizen to self-sufficient customer and in doing so
reinforce the OECD’s ideological commitments to market liberalism (see also Lingard, 1997;
Lingard and Rizvi, 1998, pp. 262-267; Henry et al., 2001, pp. 8, 26-31; Spring, 1998, pp. 160-178).
Third, the OECD’s rationales are premised on the modern subject for whom knowledge is
uncontested, objective, representative of the real world and universally relevant across time
and space. Where globalisation demands the skills to ‘relativize’ the production and
application of knowledges across local, national and global domains, and across divergent
spaces and places, the OECD’s understanding of knowledge is anchored within a
spatio-temporal fixity.
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A number of conclusions can be drawn from the OECD documents on internationalisation.
First, there are strong economic and political imperatives driving the internationalisation of
education, with macroeconomic theory having a significant influence on stakeholder views.
Internationalisation is viewed as the means to competitive advantage for national economies
(Knight and de Wit, 1995, p.116; Henry et al., 2001, pp. 146-150). This perspective was held by
both Anglo-European Member states and stakeholders within the Asia Pacific region. Second,
and in conclusion, academic and cultural rationales appear to be secondary and subordinated
to the economic rationale. To this end, the role of universities in upholding the ‘national
interest’ suggests a thematic continuity with the nation-building and imperialising university
of the 19th and 20th centuries.
There is broad agreement by educators that the OECD tends to steer education policy agendas
towards ideological preferences which are largely market centred (Henry et al., 2001, p. 8).
This has not always been the case and the OECD’s shift towards the market is best understood
as emblematic of a particular historical moment. For example, in the 1960s and 70s, it
subscribed to a version of human capital theory influenced by the social democratic discourses
of the Keynesian state where education was associated with national investment, a means
towards greater national wealth and social development for the individual (Marginson, 1993,
pp. 45-50; 1997a, pp. 92-94; Lingard and Rizvi, 1998, pp. 262-264). By the end of the 1980s, the
OECD was promoting a reframed human capital theory, one which was strongly influenced
by market liberalism. The benefits of education were touted to be greatest for the individual
and in accordance with this logic, costs were attributable to the individual. Key OECD reports
such Universities Under Scrutiny (1987) and Financing Higher Education (1990) highlight the
organisation’s role in producing the discursive conditions which has led to the normalisation
of education markets.
Given that the objects of discourse in the OECD-led internationalisation debates have largely
been framed in terms of national interest, it is timely to discuss the national policy frameworks
surrounding internationalisation in the producer countries. In the next section, I describe the
university sector in Australia as a basis for exploring key developments which have
influenced its internationalisation policies and programmes. I follow this up with a selective
review of academic writings about international students and international education. Some
space is also devoted to describing media discourses about international education and
international students. My interest is to examine how these public discourses of policy,
academic and media texts construct ‘truths’ about international students and international
education.
4.3 Australia: Mapping The Policy Terrain
From the post-war period to the 1970s, a series of policy initiatives transformed Australia’s
universities from ‘elite’ to ‘mass’ institutions. These developments took place against a
backdrop of postwar reconstruction, rising community aspirations, high economic growth
and Keynesian economic management. In other words, a ‘reason of state’ rationality
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constructed education as a public good which had a vitally important role to play in
Australia’s modernisation and nation-building projects. (Marginson, 1997b, pp. 11-15).
The 1974 abolition of university fees for all students, marked the accelerated momentum
towards the ‘massification’ of higher education. In addition, some 10, 000 government funded
places were provided for international students who, up to then, had paid fees to attend
Australian universities (Jones, 1986; Throsby, 1985). Country quotas were also in place to
regulate/control regional flows. This brief period of free education for private overseas
students was abolished five years later with the introduction of the Overseas Student Charge
(OSC)3.
In the second half of the 1980s, a series of micro and macro-economic reforms saw the
promulgation of what were essentially private sector practices, into the management and
operations of the public sector in Australia. These changes, broadly termed ‘corporate
federalism’ by social policy theorists (see Lingard, 1993, 2000), were mirrored in other spheres
of the Australian public sector. A steady stream of Reports and Commissions4 were used by
government to support arguments for the marketisation of the public sector (see Marginson
and Considine, 2000, p. 45). Beginning with the privatisation of several government
enterprises, the sites for marketisation were rapidly broadened to incorporate health,
education and welfare services. A raft of ‘technologies’ were used to reconceptualise and
reconfigure public services to “a form of economic production” (Marginson, 1997a, p. 85). The
government’s rationale for these sweeping changes was the urgent need to improve Australia
international competitiveness. Indeed, the imposition of full fees for international students in
1986 took place against a backdrop of a deteriorating trade deficit, when the government saw
the export of education services as replacing the declining revenue from manufacturing
exports. Universities were exhorted to do their bit to alleviate this national economic crisis by
admitting fee paying international students.
The 1988 White Paper on Higher Education established the basis for the introduction of
market rationalities in the higher education sector by introducing changes to the financing,
structures, operations and governance of universities. Popularly referred to as the ‘Dawkins
reforms’, after the Education minister of the day, these changes included: the abolition of the
binary system of higher education which had been based on a two-tiered system of
universities and the more vocationally oriented Institutes of Technology and Colleges of
Advanced Education. A Unified National System was subsequently introduced based on the
amalgamation of both tiers (Marginson, 1997b, pp. 231-233). New systems of funding were
introduced to allow institutions greater autonomy in managing their budgets and planning
their operations, while at the same time, placing greater emphasis on reporting and evaluation
3. The OSC was set at one third of the average cost of a university education in 1979. This proportion rose to 50% by 1988
4. They included the Industries Commission, the Productivity Commission (reforming the public service) and the Hoare Report (on governance within universities) (see Marginson and Considine, 2000).
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of institutional performance. Meek and Wood (1997, p. 255) observe that these changes were
partly driven by the transformation of Australian higher education from an elite to a mass
system. These new systems also encouraged greater competition between and within,
universities.
A ‘touching faith’ in market principles by governments of all political persuasions in Australia
saw the discursive construction of higher education as a market. Central to this discourse of
markets, was the assumption that the operational efficiency of the higher education sectors
required a ‘performance’ culture and improved management. The ‘grids of specification’ were
resolutely corporate (see Marginson, 2000b; Meadmore, 1998, pp. 28, 31-34; Meek and Wood,
1997, p. 262). A series of accountability frameworks were subsequently introduced, ostensibly
to monitor the progress of universities, but also to discipline and steer universities towards
market-like behaviours. Couched in a language of protecting universities from declining
academic standards, the accountability frameworks reflected an appropriation of a
university-originated discourse which first emerged at the time of the Unified System: falling
standards (Vidovich and Slee, 2001, p. 35).
The introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) in 1990 for all
students established the basis for a user-pays system of student funding. The government
defended itself against criticisms that it was re-introducing an elite higher education system
by utilizing a similar argument used in the OECD-produced Universities Under Scrutiny: free
university education had not improved socioeconomic representativeness of students in
universities5 (Marginson, 1997b, p. 2, 224-231).
However, like any policy field, the higher education field features multiple actors, all of who
wield different levels of influence and who push different agendas (see Ball, 1994, 1998; Taylor
et al. 1997, pp. 22-35). The policies aimed at marketisation of the university sector were
‘settlements’ and ‘trade-offs’. Thus, in the midst of a broader push to propel universities
towards market-like provisions and forms, an equity agenda emerged, aimed at increasing the
representativeness of university student population. Expressed in the narratives of social
justice, A Fair Chance For All: Higher Education That's Within Everyone's Reach (1990) outlined a
national policy framework for educational equity. As part of this policy, universities
introduced a series of curricular and pedagogical initiatives which established the context for
pedagogical improvements to address the needs of students from non-English speaking
backgrounds, including international students 6.
A change of government in 1996, saw a reduction of government contributions to universities
and exacerbated the funding crisis that universities were already facing. Against this
5. Set originally at a fixed fee (A$1800) for full-time students, and payable through the taxation system when students joined the workforce and acquired the capacity to pay, by 199 7, HECS had escalated so that students were paying a yearly fee between $3300- and $5500, depending on their course of study. In other words, Australian students were contributing anywhere from 35% to 125% of the cost of the course (Marginson, 1997b, p. 2, p.228). In effect, changes to HECS in 1996, has resulted in an average 40% increase to students (ibid, see also Universities in Crisis pp. 276-280).
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backdrop, the government commissioned the West Review in 1998. It was expected to establish
a blue-print for the role of Australian higher education in the twenty-first century. The Review
took the stance that education was a commodity to be globally traded. This was evident in the
numerous references it made to the ‘globalised higher education marketplace’. The Review
called for greater differentiation within Australian higher education to maximise student
‘choice’ and to enable the higher education ‘industry’ to be globally competitive. It argued for
‘student-centred funding’ which it declared, would establish the basis for ‘student choice’ to
be incorporated into the funding equation, suggesting by implication that such a move would
introduce a democratic impulse into considerations of funding.
Two other themes highlighted by the Review as significant were lifelong learning and the
educational possibilities offered by the ‘digital revolution’. Significantly, the West Review
called for accreditation arrangements which would enable the inclusion of more private
providers in the higher education sector. It framed its recommendations against a grid of
‘world best practice’ in the global education marketplace. As with the Dawkins’ inspired
reforms, international forces were identified to be driving the need for changes to national
education policy (Marginson and Mollis, 2000, p. 53; Pratt and Poole, 2000, p. 17). In short, the
West Review provided the discursive framework for greater engagement between higher
education and market forces in the future.
The 1999 ministerial White Paper on research and research training, Knowledge and Innovation
echoed the market focus which had featured in the West Report: universities through their
research activities have an important role to play in enhancing Australia’s competitive
position; there is a need for accountability measures to ensure value for public monies spent
on universities. Knowledge and Innovation was followed up a year later with an action plan,
Backing Australia’s Ability: An Innovation Action Plan. Three thematic priorities constituted the
Plan: ‘Generating ideas through research, commercialisation research and building a highly
skilled workforce’. The Plan recommended increased research funding in targetted areas,
introduced project-specific infrastructure grants and curiously, for a plan aimed at enhancing
Australia’s research abilities, it introduced an income contingent loans scheme for
non-research, fee paying postgraduate students.
The next major report on the university sector was essentially a report card on the health of
Australian universities. Universities in Crisis (2001) reported on a parliamentary inquiry by the
Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education Committee into
6. These equity frameworks steered higher education institutions towards formulating policies aimed at recruiting and retaining students from six identified equity groups, through a series of funded initia-tives. These groups were students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (SES), rural and isolated students, Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders, students with disabilities, women in non-traditional disciplines (technosciences) and students from non-English speaking backgrounds. The criteria to con-sider an individual from a non-English cultural background was that they had to have English as a second language and to have lived in Australia for less than 10 years. A resident of Australia for more than 10 years cannot be considered in this category regardless of language abilities. A 1996 Review subsequently found that students from non- English speaking backgrounds were no longer underrep-resented (DEET, 1990).
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universities7. In contrast to the West Review which excited much interest from corporate
bodies, the Inquiry received relatively few submissions from the private sector and was
dominated instead by submissions from universities, individual academics, students and
professional associations. The findings and recommendations of Universities in Crisis were
broad, far-reaching and as such are beyond the scope of this thesis. I will restrict my discussion
to those sections of the Inquiry which commented on the international education export
industry.
A key argument made to the Committee was that insufficient public funding of Australian
universities was affecting Australia’s ability to participate in the global knowledge-based
economy.The Committee noted that government outlays accounted for 47% of university
revenue compared to 57% in 1996 and 85% in 1987. Public funding of universities was noted
to compare unfavourably with the OECD country average (Senate Employment, Workplace
Relations, Small Business and Education Committee, 2001, p. 5, 34-40). It was reported that the
student-staff ratio in universities had declined from 13.7 in 1989 to 18.8 to 2000 (ibid, p. 166).
This was noted as reducing the quality of the education experience for both international and
domestic students (pp. 356-357). Against this ratio, it was noted that between 1987 and 1998,
there had been a 300% increase in the numbers of Pro-and Deputy Vice-Chancellors (ibid, p.
40, 126).
Submissions to the Committee claimed that reduced public funding of universities had
facilitated greater institutional segmentation than what had previously existed in the
pre-marketised era. Regional and ‘newer’ universities were noted to be experiencing greater
financial difficulties and a number of regional universities had attempted to ‘re-spatialise’
themselves in a bid to be more attractive to international students. They did so by opening
‘branch campuses’, in reality, managed offices, in the Central Business Districts of major
Australian cities. The Committee heard that university entrepreneurialism, particularly in the
area of international student fees, had not replaced lost public funding in real terms (p. 353).
The higher education ‘success story’ of the decade, the international education export
industry, was problematised in several submissions made to the Committee. It was
acknowledged that while fee income from international students had generated export
income and provided fiscal resources to offset reduced government funding, the international
export industry had little impact on broadening Australia’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific
region and the broader international community (p. 344). Of particular concern was the
concentration of international students and by extension, revenue, in a handful of disciplines.
Business and Information Technology emerged as the ‘winning’ disciplines. Concerns were
also expressed about the small numbers of international students enrolled in research degrees,
a trend which was anticipated to do little for Australian efforts in becoming a knowledge
society. The gains made by the Colombo Plan in training future leaders for public services,
research and industry were considered to be at risk with the concentration of students in
7. See Universities in Crisis (2001).
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selected areas of study (pp. 347-348). Furthermore, some submissions alleged subtle steering
by universities towards ‘soft marking’ to allow international students and other full fee paying
students to pass courses.
The ‘success’ of international education was further problematised by the release of financial
data which noted the heavy reliance of several universities on international student fee
income. Three universities were named as drawing more that 20% of their revenue from
international students’ fees, leading to concerns that they were exposed to high levels of
financial risk, given that recruitment targets were influenced by factors outside of the control
of universities (Moodie, 2002)8.
Many of the submissions to the hearing into Universities in Crisis used a discourse of national
interest to argue for greater ‘public investment’ in Australian universities to enable Australia
to participate in the knowledge-based economy. This was not a unanimous view. An opposing
position from sections of the educational bureaucracy expressed renewed commitments to the
‘ideal’ of the self-sufficient ‘public entrepreneurial university’ (Gallagher, 2001; 2000, see also
Richardson, 2001, p. 34). Universities were discursively constructed as private sector
organisations: “universities are autonomous financial institutions who are responsible for
their own survival” (Gallagher, 2001). The ‘crisis’ facing Australian universities required them
to “be internationally competitive or risk losing market share” (ibid). What these statements
reveal is the dominance of market rationalities in the imaginations of education bureaucrats.
International competitiveness was equated with the ability of matching the services of
overseas competitors who could “provide customised convenience programmes, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week“(Gallagher, 2001, p. 7). The spheres of education and training were thus
converged, using the ‘virtual’ for-profit, corporate university as a ‘grid’ against which to
evaluate the performance of Australian universities. Barriers to the internationally
competitive university were identified to include “operating times which failed to take into
account the changed characteristics and circumstances of students” and “underperforming
staff” who were protected by intransigent university unions (ibid).
The recent discussion paper, Higher Education at the Crossroads, has revisited issues raised in
the earlier West Review including ‘efficiency and effectiveness’, ‘revenue diversification’,
‘allocation of public subsidies’, ‘learning experience and outcomes’, ‘institutional
specialisation’, ‘governance, management and workplace relations’. One particular issue that
has received significant public coverage is whether government support should be directed
towards supporting one or two world class universities. For the greater part, the discussion
8. The three universities whose operational budgets were noted to be excessively reliant on fee income of international students were: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Central Queensland University (CQU) and Curtin University. The external risk factors identified were the changing gov-ernment policies of sending countries, changes in currency exchange rates and the changing economic circumstances of students and their families (Moodie, 2002).
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has used ‘league tables’ as the grid with which to determine ‘world class’ and ‘excellence’
(Duckett, 2002).
Having mapped the policy context in which Australian universities operate, I now describe
and analyse the policies relating to international education. I start with a historical snapshot,
beginning with the ‘aid’ phase of international education to the present dominance of the
higher education export industry.
4.3.1 International Education: Building An Export Industry?
The earliest records of overseas students in Australia point to their presence in 1904 in
Australian universities although Australia’s engagement with significant numbers of
international students commenced in 1950 with the introduction of the Colombo Plan (see
Tootell, 1999). As detailed in Chapter One of this study, the Plan’s rationales reflected a
mixture of political self-interest and humanitarian concerns (Auletta, 2000, pp. 47-51;
Alexander and Rizvi, 1993, p, 17-18; Rizvi, 1997, pp.6-17). The withdrawal of colonial rule and
the success of communist-rule in mainland China, had created Australian anxiety about
threats to national security from the ‘north’. The Plan was to be a ‘gift’ to establish affiliations
and affinities between Australia and the local elites and middle classes in the newly
independent states.
In the latter half of the 1980s, major shifts in higher education policy designed to reduce
reliance on government funding led to the introduction of full fees for international students.
An earlier quota which capped the numbers of international students in Australia was
removed along with a country quota which governed the numbers from sending countries.
The shift from an aid to trade policy can be traced to two significant government reviews in
the 1980s. The Jackson Committee (1984) which was appointed to review the Australian
overseas aid programme, recommended the introduction of a policy to impose full fees on
international students9. The Review argued that such a policy shift would provide a source of
export income for Australia:
The Committee believes that Australian education does not need the protection it now
enjoys but that it has the resources and ability to compete effectively in an international
context...
...The demand for education services throughout the Asian region is likely to be quite
large in the next 20 years or so. The expansion of Australian education to meet this
demand would encourage cultural exchanges and tourism. It would provide jobs for
Australians directly, and there would be multiplier effects through the provision of
food, shelter, clothing and entertainment for students. In American university towns,
one ‘town’ job is generally added for every additional ‘gown’ enrolled (ibid, p.93).
9. See Australian Parliament Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence (1984)
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With this in mind, the Review urged that foreign students be accepted on the basis of
“...available places, academic performance and a full economic fee...” (ibid, p.94).
The Goldring Review (1984), by contrast, recommended the continuation of the 1980s
programme based on offering a subsidised number of places for international students to
study in Australian universities10. Both Reviews had arrived at opposing recommendations,
yet the recommendations of one, the Jackson Review, were translated into subsequent
government policy, leading to one of the most significant transformations in Australian higher
education11. This, despite the fact, that the Jackson Review ‘s primary focus was not on the
higher education system. It was, after all, reviewing Australia’s aid programme. However,
following the dictum of critical policy analysts, the form and timing of a policy’s introduction,
that is, its ‘fields of emergence’, are influenced by the ideological, political, economic and
social forces germane at a particular juncture in time and space. The ‘will to marketise’ had
engulfed the entire public sector and Australia’s development of an international education
export industry must be seen in this broader context.
With the endorsements of the Jackson Review, the government introduced two policies in
1985 which established the basis for the export industry in Australia: the Overseas Student
Policy12 and the Policy on the Export of Education Services. A number of initiatives were
provided by the government in a bid to stimulate interest on the parts of universities.
Institutions were allowed to retain a large proportion of the international student fee
income.Where there had once been rules intended to assuage domestic disquiet at the
potential displacement of Australian students by large numbers of wealthy overseas students,
quotas on international student numbers were now removed13. Grants of up to A$200, 000
were provided to universities to enable them to develop promotional and marketing plans for
the recruitment of overseas students (Back, Davis and Olsen, 1996, pp. 6-7; Marginson, 1997a,
p. 233; Meek and Wood, 1997, p. 259).
Where an ‘aid’ discourse had once prevailed in the interests of furthering national and
geopolitical aims, this rapidly eclipsed into concerns about the private benefits that
international students were receiving individually. International students were constructed
into an elite group whose eligibility to receive education subsidies from Australia was called
into question: “In many cases subsidised students had been relatively well off or from
relatively wealthy countries” (Back, Davis and Olsen, 1996, p. 7; Jones, 1986, p. 105). The policy
10. See Mutual Advantage (Goldring,1984).11. Not all the Jackson Review’s recommendations were accepted. A recommendation to substantially
increase the number of aid scholarships to 10,000 by the mid-1990s, was not taken up. 12. The Overseas Student Policy established 3 categories of overseas students: those sponsored by the
Australian government as part of the development assistance (aid) programmes, the private but subsi-dised students who paid a proportion of their education costs and the new category of full fee paying overseas students (FFPOS).Country quotas were maintained for both the sponsored students and the ‘subsidised’ category of private students.
13. The regulations stipulated that no more than 10% of a university’s students could be overseas stu-dents. Also, subsidised students could not constitute more than 20% of numbers enrolled in any one course (Smart and Ang, 1993).
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shift led to a meteoric rise in international student numbers14. A new discourse of ‘trade’ had
emerged. A repertoire of discursive objects both produced and sustained this discourse:
‘customers’, ‘export commodities’, ‘priority markets’, ‘international competitiveness’,
‘products’, ‘brands’, ‘customer service’. It came as no surprise when the government policy of
offering subsidised places to private students was discontinued in 1990. In the space of just
five years, a market-driven industry had been grafted onto a publicly funded system which,
up to then, had catered for Australians from the dominant English-speaking
Anglo-Celtic/Saxon groups.
From a marketing and promotional perspective, Australia’s incursion into the international
export market depicted a peculiarly ‘back-to-front’ quality, which contradicts international
business axioms. The usual sequence of events that accompanies the sale of a product in an
international market is such that a product is usually first marketed domestically. Through
this experience the product is improved continuously and thereafter launched into an
international context with appropriate refinements and accommodations for what is
recognised as a different customer base (see Lynch, Scott and Smith, 1996). The pre-marketised
Australian university however, had little experience of relating to the student as a potential
customer. It lacked the requisite competencies within both academic and administrative
streams to provide a quality educational product to a culturally and linguistically diverse
population of students hailing from post-colonial nation-states (Alexander and Rizvi, 1993,
pp. 16-19; Rizvi and Walsh, 1998, pp. 8-10; see also Marginson, 1997a, p. 242-244).
Within a relatively short time, concerns were emerging about the workings of the deregulated
international education sector. The collapse of several English language schools, a ‘corporate
cowboy’ approach to recruitment by some marketing personnel and concerns of immigration
fraud were listed as damaging Australia’s reputation as a provider of quality international
education. In 1991, in a bid to reign in the excessively entrepreneurial practices of some
Australian educational institutions, the government introduced ESOS – the Education
Services for Overseas Students (Registration of Providers and Financial Regulation) Act. ESOS
was part of a broader discursive ensemble aimed at curbing the fall out from the ‘free market’
era of international education. The Beazley Ministerial Statement and the AVCC’s Code of
Ethical Practice for the Provision of Education to International Students are part of this
ensemble.
The 1992 Beazley Ministerial Statement was emblematic of a government move to officially
articulate a wider interpretation of, and commitment to, international education. In opening,
the Statement addressed two areas, ‘Benefits of International Education’ and ‘Safeguards for
14. In 1986, the first year of introduction of the Education Services for Overseas Students, there were 2,000 full fee paying international students. By 1991, this number had swelled to 48, 000 (Smart and Ang, 1993,).
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Australian students’, indicating that it was aimed at both domestic and international
audiences. It claimed the following as its guiding principles:
• educational values and quality,
• a policy and regulatory framework,
• quality infrastructure to enable the provision of broader expressions of internationali-
sation (staff exchanges, joint research, study abroad opportunities etc.),
• an Asia-Pacific focus (which included America) and,
• partnerships between government and education providers aimed in part, at intro-
ducing flexible and streamlined processes.
The Statement’s opening paragraph attempted to discursively ‘re-focus’ the meaning of
international education away from the largely commercial focus which followed the ‘free
market’ phase at the tail-end of the 1980s:
International education and training comprises a wide range of activities involving the
international movement of staff, students, education materials, ideas and research.
The Government recognises that international education is an increasingly important
part of Australia’s international relations. It uniquely spans the cultural, economic and
interpersonal dimensions of international relations. It assists cultural understanding for
all parties involved. It enriches Australia’s education and training systems and the
wider Australian society by encouraging a more international outlook.
(Beazley, 1992, p. 1)
The Statement portrayed international education as multidimensional with the potential to
deliver a series of reciprocal social, cultural, political and economic benefits to all parties
involved. Internationalisation was expected to endow Australian students with a ‘globally
portable’ education which would enable them to participate in a globalising economy.
The ‘public relations’ function of the Statement is strongly evident and indicates a bold
attempt to counter overseas criticisms that Australia’s interest in international education was
both narrow and commercial. Accordingly, the Statement attempted to create the impression
that a raft of well-considered, coherent and systemically cohesive policies underpinned
Australia’s commitment to internationalisation:
The terms ”internationalisation” and “international education” reflect the move to a
more internationally oriented education system. Accepting international students at
Australian institutions is only one element of this process. It also involves making
courses and teaching methods more internationally competitive through links with
business and through agreements with overseas governments and educational
institutions (ibid).
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The Statement acknowledged criticisms of the ‘trade’ phase of international education
although it tried to limit responsibility for this ‘deviation’ to private providers. It pledged to:
...shift institutions away from narrowly economic perspectives... it is important to focus
on internationalisation of education... Focusing on internationalisation does not require
neglecting education as an export industry. We must continue to increase the
competitiveness of our education services....(ibid)
On the one hand, this paragraph and some of the preceding policy text, suggests a
fundamental shift in values from an insular and inward-looking nationalism to a more
inclusive internationalism However, a closer reading unsettles this proposition. The passive
clause, “...it is important to focus on internationalisation of education...”betrays the absence of
government agency to institutionalise broader understandings of internationalisation within
Australian universities. Economic rationales tend to dominate in the Statement’s text, evident
in references to: “making courses more internationally competitive”, “improving our
competitiveness”, “enhance trade and investment”, “appreciation of the diversity and quality
of Australian goods and services”. By comparison, there are relatively few references to the
cultural dimensions of internationalisation.
The Beazley Ministerial Statement attempted to discursively link the internationalisation of
education with the emerging processes of globalisation, although it clearly privileges the
economic dimensions of globalisation. For example, the Statement attempted to re-spatialise
Australia’s identity by prioritizing Australia’s geographical links with the Asia-Pacific region.
By opening with a reference to cultural understandings, it highlighted the importance of
intersubjective cultural literacies for Australian students as prospective members of the
workforce, and on a broader scale, for Australia’s international relations (Rizvi, 1997).
In this respect, the Beazley Statement reflects a discursive continuity with the discourse of
Productive Diversity.15 Constructed by melding together the discourses of the market, equity
and cultural diversity, Productive Diversity sought to build an ‘enterprise culture’ aimed at
increasing productivity and competitive advantage in the global marketplace. A central
dimension of this discourse focused on how Australian businesses could ‘capitalise’ on the
skills and knowledge of Australians who were born and educated overseas (see Karpin, 1995).
A host of reports, political pronouncements and conferences like, this 1992 conference,
Productive Diversity in Business: Profiting from Australia’s Multicultural Advantage discursively
manoeuvred the social inclusion of Australia’s non-English speaking population, in
particular, those of ‘Asian’ heritage with the Enterprise Nation.
A macro-contextual reading of the Productive Diversity discourse would associate its
emergence with the economic dynamism of South-East Asian countries and the economic
15. The concept of Productive Diversity was part of a state-led initiative intended to encourage Australian enterprises to prepare “Australia’s managers to meet the challenges of the Asia-Pacific century”. Firms were encouraged to develop greater cultural and gender diversity in their management and to expand their vision to trade in the Asia-Pacific.
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awakening of the ‘sleeping giant’, China. Putting cultural diversity to work for capitalism
involved the discursive positioning of Australia as a node in an East-West trade circuit and the
construction of multicultural Australia as a both an active player, mediator and facilitator of
Euro-American business incursions into Asia. The social justice impulses within the
Productive Diversity discourse were subordinated while its commercial imperatives were
seized upon (see also Mitchell, 1993). Perhaps a consequence not intended by the architects of
the Productive Diversity discourse was its role in ‘othering’ Asians. It did so by resurrecting a
populist narrative of fears of ‘Asian-style’ exploitation and inequality.
Another instrument that was intended to temper rabid entrepreneurialism was the Australian
Vice-Chancellor’s Committee’s (AVCC) Code of Ethical Practice for the Provision of
Education to International Students. The Code covered wide ranging aspects of international
education including the promotion, recruitment, admission, education and welfare
dimensions. It addressed the burgeoning complexity of international education programmes
and activities and acknowledged the economic, psychological and intellectual challenges that
accompanied study overseas:
By accepting a place international students have taken a major step in their lives; they
may leave their home countries for long periods, travel considerable distances and
undertake considerable expense. The Code has been formulated with this in mind
(AVCC, 1998).
The Code specified the types of customers to be targeted by universities as: “only those
international students who have reasonable chances of success”. The Code’s Guidelines for
the promotion and marketing of international education also made several references to the
need to uphold ‘national interest’ ostensibly expressed as: upholding the quality and
reputation of Australian education by paying due regard to “the cultural and education
relationships between Australia and other countries”, and refraining from circulating
“malicious, misleading” information about other Australian universities to further the
competitive advantage of individual universities (ibid). The Code functions as a set of
guidelines rather than a set of prescriptive norms or set policy, leaving institutions to
self-monitor their adherence. There is no evidence of any action being taken against any
institution for breaches of the Code, although the recent Universities in Crisis inquiry revealed
continuing concerns about entry and assessment standards. (Senate Employment, Workplace
Relations, Small Business and Education Committee, 2001, p. 350).
In 2000 a new version of the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act was
introduced in a bid to augment the regulatory role of the government. ESOS (2000) can be read
as part of a broader governmentality aimed firstly, at reinforcing an earlier policy aimed at
protecting Australia’s reputation as a exporter of quality education. It has placed a renewed
emphasis on English language competence as a screening device. Prospective students from
regions considered to be at ‘high risk’ for illegal immigration, must now sit an examination to
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ascertain their English language proficiency, even if a significant proportion of their education
has been in English.
To this end, ESOS (2000) shares a discursive continuity with government measures aimed at
‘border control’. As a discourse, border control has seized the official and popular imagination
in Australia for much of 2000 and 2001. Its emergence in the discursive field of international
education export industry is thus not surprising, given the historical links between national
interest, national security and educating ‘the other’ (see Alexander and Rizvi, 1993). Both
xenophobia and its sibling, racism, have been long-standing fixtures in the Australian
nation-building project (see Castles and Miller, 1998; Fiske, Hodge and Turner, 1987; Turner
1994). Contemporary preoccupations with border control may well be resonant with the
discursive logic of the ‘yellow peril’ and White Australia, although recent developments have
seen a broadening of the thesis of national vulnerability to ‘international terrorism’.
ESOS 2000 places greater responsibilities on universities and their agents to ensure that
accurate information is provided to potential students about courses, and to accelerate credit
transfer processes16. As well as the more stringent admissions requirements noted above, it
vests increased monitoring and enforcement powers in the education and immigration arms
of government.
A few preliminary deductions can be made about the types of subject positions which are
being assumed and produced by ESOS (2000). Students’ spatial or geographical identities are
central in determining whether they will occupy subject positions of ‘valued customer’ or
‘potentially illegal immigrant’.The AVCC has criticised the use of English language
examinations for the Indian subcontinent, arguing that “key markets stand to be wiped out”.
Of particular concern is the fate of the Indian postgraduate market, currently the second
largest market for American universities and which up to the introduction of ESOS (2000) had
been carefully nurtured by Australian marketers to grow from a fledgling earlier state. In this
respect, ESOS 2000 exemplifies the complex, contradictory and incoherent side to policy
responses. It has superseded national economic concerns by privileging border protection.
16. ESOS (2000) will require a number of administrative changes. For example, courses cannot be adver-tised without a CRICOS code (The Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Programs for Overseas Students). The revised ESOS Act has the potential to place barriers on the electronic enrolments, previ-ously regarded as an inevitable step towards the goal of technological and administrative efficiency. ESOS also exposes universities to increased financial costs and accountability: it is their responsibility to ascertain that their agents are fully trained to discharge the new institutional responsibilities stem-ming from changes to the Act. By accelerating time frames for credit transfer approvals, there are pos-sible consequences for academic workloads and possibly, academic standards. All approvals for credits for prior learning must now be made at the point of offer. It is possible that this change may steer the process of credit transfer approval towards the administrative arm of the university, where it was previously an academic function.
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To conclude my discussion of policy discourses, I end with an analysis of the AVCC ‘s
Discussion Paper On International Education. The Paper starts with an introductory statement
which discursively links international education with Australia’s national interest:
Internationalisation is a major priority for Australian universities. It must remain so if
Australia and its universities are to be internationally competitive and lay claim to
quality education.
The Paper’s captions and headings highlight its main concerns as: the economic impact of the
international education export industry, (‘The Economic Impact’), competition with other
producer nations (‘The Competition’), and the impact of state regulations (‘Government
Imposed Regulations and Barriers’). In articulating its vision for the future (‘The New
Paradigm in International Education’), it makes references to: “distance education, flexible
delivery and e-learning”; “international experience for Australian students”; and staying
competitive in “the globalising environment in which higher education operates”.
Maintaining a competitive edge in international education markets is the argument with
political currency and the AVCC, as a pre-eminent higher education lobby body has used this
discourse strategically. Three key objects form the basis of these recommendations: ‘markets’,
‘competitive advantage’ and ‘government barriers’. In essence, these recommendations
exemplify the AVCC’s s vision for international education. However, its largely commercial
preoccupations are worrying in their reductionism and appear to have obscured its ability to
imagine a richer understanding of internationalisation. This is particularly evident in its calls
for a greater emphasis on marketing and promotion. To bolster its lobbying for greater
government support for marketing activities, the AVCC has discursively linked higher
education with the tourism industry 17. The AVCC argues for a government contribution of
$35 million in place of current funding of $13 million.
The way forward for international education according to the AVCC, is more marketing,
easier and cheaper visas, and financial initiatives to encourage Australians to study in
universities in the Asia-Pacific. No mention is made of the need to change university curricula
to develop a ‘global imagination’ in students and staff, nor of the need to develop
understandings of the historical, economic, cultural and spatial politics surrounding
knowledge development and transmission (see Rizvi, 2000; also Sadiki, 2001; Patrick, 1997).
The AVCC’s acknowledgement for the need for improved Study Abroad programmes to the
Asia-Pacific region is commendable18, however, the rest of the Discussion Paper offers a
discursive vision for international education which is at best, pedestrian.
17. The AVCC compared the federal government’s current contribution for the marketing and promotion of international education against the $90 million spent by the government on promoting Australian tourism.
18. The AVCC has recommended setting a government target of 10% of Australian undergraduates to study overseas as exchange students. It has also required greater government support for regionally focused programmes like UMAP (University Mobility in the Asia- Pacific Program) and UMIOR (Uni-versity Mobility in the Indian Ocean Region Program) to facilitate greater staff and student mobility.
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To summarise my discussion of the policy terrain of international education, the raft of
changes popularly expressed as the ‘aid to trade to internationalisation’ trajectory, have
yielded both negative and positive outcomes. On the negative side, a prevailing short-termism
on the parts of many universities, coupled with declining government support has hindered
the sector from developing into a unique and viable, globally-oriented higher education
system (see Clyne, Marginson and Woock, 2001; Marginson, 2002). Researchers have
associated this narrow vision with the constitutive power relations that shaped
monoculturalism and neocolonialism in Australia (Alexander and Rizvi, 1993; Morris and
Hudson, 1995; Singh, 1998). Furthermore, a weak and relatively young university culture has
led the Australian university to produce a model of higher education which is a poor imitation
of an American brand (Marginson and Considine, 2000, pp. 182-183; Marginson, 2002, pp.
420-423). The resulting international university has remained narrowly preoccupied with the
national economic interests.
There have also been positive consequences from the international education export industry,
even if these were not intended by Australian policymakers in their ‘will to marketise’. The
experiences of teaching relatively large numbers of international students from culturally and
linguistically diverse backgrounds, had the effect of problematising the monocultural
assumptions of Australian curricula and pedagogy, which up to then, had remained
tenaciously resilient to broader societal moves towards greater engagement with
multiculturalism and inclusivity (Morris and Hudson, 1995; Rizvi and Walsh, 1998; Singh,
1998). In Chapter Two, I provided a deconstruction of a selection of academic writings from
the pre-marketised university. I argued that the aid era produced and sustained a discourse
of ‘unequal other’. The subjectivities constructed for international students were premised on
a profoundly ethnocentric, ‘othering’ discourse. The international student was a passive and
uncritical learner who made unrealistic demands of university staff. Against this backdrop, it
is problematic to idealize the liberal university as a custodian of intellectual ideals, whose
integrity has only recently been sullied by the excesses of crass academic capitalism.
Other productive engagements with marketisation include the massification effects of
recruitment drives by Australian universities. In the pre-marketised era, access to Australian
higher education was limited by quotas on student numbers and source countries.
Furthermore, for ethnic minorities such as the Chinese heritage communities of Indonesia and
Malaysia whose participation in local universities had long been impeded by discriminatory
state policies, this massification of international education was perceived in largely positive
terms. Many students have been able to use their Australian credentials to re-locate to
countries where they face less discrimination. Finally, through the proliferation of franchises
and articulation arrangements, the flow of capital and investment from ‘west’ to ‘east’ has
been partially reversed.
This stated, the concern of this thesis is not to undertake a ‘cost-benefit’ analysis into
international education. Rather, it is to inquire into the adequacy of the subject-positions that
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are being produced by the international university, a creature of the modern nation-state;
whether the subjectivities arising from an international education are appropriate for a more
global and globalising world and if indeed, a temporal closure from the excesses of modernity
is being achieved.
4.3.2 Academic Discourse: Research into International Education
Academic research on international education embraces a vast array of topics: markets and
marketing (Brown, 1997; Edwards and Edwards, 2001; Smart and Ang, 1995, Jolley, 1997),
student satisfaction (Chen, 1999; Volet and Tan-Quigley, 1999); international student learning
(Aspland, 1999; Cadman, 2000; Keech, 1996; Pearson and Beasley, 1996; Ramburuth, 2001;
Sanderman-Gay, 1999; Volet, Renshaw and Tietzel, 1994), new models of pedagogy (Gough,
2000; Kelly, 1998, 2000; Nines, 1999; Patrick, 1997), intercultural relations and acculturation
stresses (Smart, Volet and Ang, 2000; Volet and Ang, 1998), costs-benefit analysis (Baker,
McCreedy and Johnson, 1996; Harris and Jarrett, 1990); post-colonial relations with Asia
(Alexander and Rizvi, 1993; Rizvi, 1997), globalisation (Clyne, Marginson and Woock, 2001;
Luke and Luke, 2000; Rizvi, 2000) and educational aid (Auletta, 2000; Toh and Farrelly, 1992).
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to review the positions that are taken by each of these
researchers given the focus of this thesis is on promotional practices and constructions of
international education. Instead, I will briefly review the key themes that have arisen from the
literature on international education, particularly those which have assumed the status of
‘dominant discourses’. I discussed some of this literature in Chapter Two, where I described
and analysed statements from academic discourses of the ‘aid’ era. I argued that knowledge
about the international student in the ‘aid’ era of internationalisation, constructed the student
as a passive and uncritical ‘Asian learner’. I posed the question if this discursive construction
of the international student remains resident in the imagination of some educators (see
Alexander and Rizvi, 1993). While there has been a burgeoning counter-discourse which
problematises the ethnocentric epistemologies and teaching practices of Australian
universities (see Biggs and Watkins, 1996; Keech, 1996; Niles, 1995; Patrick, 1997; Volet and
Renshaw, 1995; Pearson and Beasley, 1996), what is less clear is the extent of the
institutionalisation of this counter-discourse.
The work on international education markets spans a gamut of positions from those who see
education markets as providing ‘win-win’ outcomes for its beneficiaries, to those who
challenge the insularity of a marketised vision for international education. For Smart and Ang
(1995), the international education market in Australia has matured after a problematic start.
This maturation is evident in the continuing demand for an Australian credential, even during
the Asian Financial Crisis. Yet studies like Chen’s (1999) suggest that Australian universities
are failing to meet key expectations held by international students of the international
education experience, a view which resonates with Smart, Volet and Ang’s (2000) finding that
low levels of intercultural friendships predominate on university campuses. There are
indicators then, that spatially and culturally based conceptions of self and ‘other’ remain in
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place even in universities which pronounce themselves to be cosmopolitan and international.
This stated, when read against escalating demand by international students, it is difficult on
the surface of it to fault the brand of international education offered by Australian universities.
Other research points to the benefits received by international students – they attain an
internationally recognised credential, valued cultural capital in their home countries and
provide Australian universities with much needed fee income (Brown, 1997). Additionally, it
is argued, that international students, cannot be considered as passive recipients who
cheerfully transmute their ethnocultural and national identities while absorbing ‘western’
epistemologies (Luke and Luke, 2000; see also Luke, 2001). These points have some merit.
However, the object of my investigatory ‘gaze’ is not the international student-other, but the
world class international university. Therefore, the concern of this thesis is with the adequacy
of existing discourses and subjectivities that are produced by the international university for
the globalising world of the 21st century, rather than on the implications for individual
international students.
A more radical position is to critically analyse existing expressions of international education
against the challenges posed by a rapidly globalising world. In Appadurai’s words (2000), the
challenge is to deploy an academic imagination which is inspired by, and sustains,
globalisation-from-below. To this end, new ways of investigating the relations between
international education and globalisation are required. It is in this light that Patrick (1997), and
Kelly (1998, 2000) criticise the existing Australian brand of international education for its
failure to explore and develop new paradigms for education. They attribute this insularity to
an institutional culture preoccupied with merely selling education to international students.
Rizvi and Walsh (1998) have observed that while many Australian universities have expressed
a commitment to policies of internationalisation, these rest on limited understandings of the
power/knowledge relations underpinning notions of diversity. Following Babha (1995), they
argue against a liberal concept of cultural diversity which fails to recognise the links between
the politics of difference and the power/knowledge relations which shape what constitutes
educational discourse. As a result, “...student diversity is [seen to be] mainly relevant to issues
of interpersonal relations and not to issues of academic content and pedagogies “(p. 9). Rizvi
(2000) argues that for international education to respond adequately to the complexities,
contradictions and ambiguities of globalisation requires that both educators and students are
provided with the opportunities to develop a global imagination which he associates with
openness, tolerance, cosmopolitanism and self-reflexivity. Sadiki (2001) adds an iterative
voice to Rizvi and Walsh’s (1998) call for internationalisation to unsettle the discourse
structures within Australian universities by calling for an ‘equalisation’ of power relations
within higher education. Curricular plurality is the first step to this end, although Sadiki also
cautions against “zero-sum curricular games where... what is taught is filtered through the
mindset of quite often insular education providers”.
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For Kelly (1998, 2000) a truly international education is a ‘post-development’ education which
engages with ‘futures’ thinking and tackles thorny global issues such as equity, cultural
diversity, sustainability and gender issues. Taking a similar stance, Patrick (1997) calls for
curricular changes within the international university, which not only develop professional
capacities to tackle tasks in profoundly different national and sociocultural environments, but
more importantly, also facilitate a critique of the values espoused by various disciplinary and
professional discourses. Ultimately, Kelly (1998, 2000), Patrick (1997) and Gough (2000),
conceptualise international education as a transnational and post-development education,
one which is informed by reciprocity, responsibility and engagement with the complexities
inherent in a globally interdependent world. At the heart of their research is a discursive
vision for international education resonant with the ‘global consciousness’ and ‘global
interdependence’, highlighted in the works of various globalisation theorists (see Robertson,
1992, p. 8).
Any discussion on academic discourses on international education is not complete without an
analysis of the large body of academic writing on education markets. An exploration of this
domain, which I started in Chapter Three, is potentially useful to understand the power
regimes underpinning existing expressions of international education and the international
university. Much of this work has linked the development of education markets with a
neoliberal political rationality and the development of corresponding market-like mentalities
and subjectivities in institutions and individuals. By discursively linking the national
economy with the ‘global economy’, the state has been able to convince ‘free subjects’ of the
need for macro-economic policies to ensure ‘international competitiveness’. In other words,
by using a ‘reason of state’ rationality ‘and a complex collection of ‘steering’ technologies,
governments of all political persuasions have been able to connect the state, the market,
universities and individual employees, using the rationale of ‘there is no alternative’ (Currie
and Vidovich, 1999; Dudley, 1998; Marginson, 1997a, 1997c, 2000; Marginson and Considine,
2000; Meadmore, 1998). A preoccupation with a predominantly economic logic has also been
associated with a rise in educational instrumentalism and impression management by
universities (Meadmore, 1998; Symes, 1996, 1999).
Education markets are thus criticised for producing and perpetuating new cultures where
performativity reigns. Individual behaviours and institutional practices are deployed so as to
give the impression of ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ (see Ball, 2000; Currie, 1998a). The
professional subjectivities privileged by such institutional cultures are overwhelmingly
centred towards competitiveness, individualism and self-interest. However, the work on
education markets has been largely related to domestic rather than international education
markets. There have not been empirical studies to investigate, for example, the types of subject
positions produced in consumers who participate in international education markets.
A second strand within the education markets discourse has largely applauded the
marketisation policies of government. Within this discourse, the normative understanding of
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international education is as an export industry. According to this group of academic writers,
globalisation has created an “irreversible momentum” which will culminate in the
disintegration of the higher education “industry” (Chipman, 1998). The demand for higher
education is anticipated to be so great that established universities will not be able to meet it,
leaving the field open for private, for-profit institutions. The presence of the newcomers will
bring more competition and will push existing universities to radically reconfigure
themselves by modelling themselves on corporations to improve efficiencies and
productivity, and through collaborations with the private sector (Coaldrake and Stedman,
1998, 1999).
As they currently exist, universities are variously considered as ‘the last socialist enterprise’
(Schwartz, 2000a, 2000b), as ‘elaborate theme parks’, and expensive and bureaucratic
institutions which are relics of a redundant past (see Chipman, 1998, 2000; Schwartz, 2000b).
Within this discourse, understandings of ‘quality’ are couched in commonsense
understandings of ‘meeting customer needs’ and cost-effectiveness or ‘value for money’ (see
Gilbert, 2000; Norton, 2002). Academic entrepreneurialism is lauded as benefiting not only
talented hard-working academics, but also their institutions, individual students and
ultimately the nation-state.
This discursive strand constructs education as a commodity and universities as service
industry providers. Their responsibility is to meet the needs and expectations of their
customers and to provide a low-cost, high quality product. In this hyperglobalist context,
there is no need for a singular institution called ‘university’. Rather, the different functions of
the university – from preparation of curriculum materials, to teaching and assessment – are
best separated and outsourced. Thus, different producers could develop ‘packages of learning
resources’, to be delivered to customer-students ‘any where, any place’ by other links in the
production chain (Chipman, 1998, 2000). In effect, there are resonances here of a Fordist mode
of production along with an unassailable belief in human capital theory. Students and
employers are rational, utility-maximisers who will seek ‘value for money’ in the form of
‘quality’, low cost, credentials that provide access to employment.
Not surprisingly, it is a view held by private marketing agents who, as suggested by the
comments below, regard education like any other commodity:
...there are a great number of local agents working in Sydney...Many local agents are
discounting tuition fees to international students. And they do that often through
giving the students a share of the commission from the institution. They are giving
students cash, they are giving students discounts, they are giving students
laptops…they are giving students trips to the Gold Coast...(manager, IDP)19.
Here, despite the best of safeguards imposed by the universities, the deployment of a ‘value
for money’ discourse has manifested into a ‘discount war’. This example suggests that there
19. From interview conducted with IDP manager, 22 October 2000.
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are limitations to ‘managing from a distance’ and flirting with the market carries reputational
risk.
By way of summary, a reading of academic discourse on international education would
suggest that the international university ‘subjects at the same time that it is subjected’; the
university is both an agent and an object of power. An earlier but powerfully resilient body of
discourse has constructed the passive and uncritical Asian learner. More recent research has
problematised the monoculturalism of Australian higher education and argued for the
development of ‘new literacies and learning spaces’ which foster recognition and respect for
difference beyond the instrumental (see Rizvi and Walsh, 1998; also Gough, 2000; Kelly, 1998;
Marginson, 2002).
However, discourse structures within Australian higher education are also subjected, more
recently, by the emergence of neoliberalism which has encouraged the development of
market-attractive knowledges and market-like subjectivities. The emergence of a
governmentality committed to fiscal savings, earning institutional income and upholding
financial independence, along with notions of performativity and efficiency, has seen the
emergence of particular expressions of international education. The disciplinary power of the
market has done little to institute deep-seated curricular changes which respond to the
cultural dimensions of globalisation (Marginson, 1999, 2002; Rizvi, 1997). In all,
power/knowledge relations within the international university have continued to privilege
cultural singularity at the expense of cultural plurality along with market-attractive
disciplines and knowledges.
In the following section, I discuss media representations of international education,
international students and universities. Media texts are productive in the construction of
‘commonsense’ understandings about international education and international students.
They shape institutional and individual realities, which ultimately can influence the
subjectivities of both academic staff and international students.
4.3.3 Mapping Media Discourses
In analysing media discourses about the Australian brand of international education, three
themes are discernible. First and most prevalent is an economic theme which celebrates the
success story of the international education export industry. Second, a ‘dot.edu’ discourse is
apparent which discursively associates international education with technology. Third, a set
of discursive practices seek to textually link international students with illegal immigrants and
declining academic standards. In doing so, these constructions reinforce the position of
international students as ‘the other’.
Evident in the economic theme is a collage of dynamic phrases (“boom in exports”) and a
vocabulary of ‘competition’. Much is made of a “world market” for education. In the face of
stiff international competition, Australia is portrayed as ‘winning’ markets. The caption
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headings of news reports that I have listed below are fairly typical and work to construct a
singular meaning about international education as an export commodity:
• Nations plot to grab share (Lawnham, 2001d, p. 36)
• Asian demand to endure (Illing, 1999b, p. 40)
• British push for bigger share (Illing, 1999c, p. 36),
• Education gold in Japan (Courier-Mail, 26 March, 1999)
• There’s profit in ideas (Lyon, 2001, p. 43)
• Joint degree opens door to China market (Lawnham, 2000, p. 39)
• Oz shopfront in the UK (Lawnham, 2001a, p. 44)
• Uni push to export courses (Illing, 1998, p. 33)
• Chinese market ready for boom (Illing, 1999d, p. 38)
• A New Boom Sweeps Clean (Australian, 28 April, 1999, pp. 38-39)
• Conference showcases education as business (Lyon, 2000, p. 34)
• There’s gold in them commercial arms (Australian, 2000c, p. 37)
• Ideas flow in a sellers’ marketplace (Leon, 2002, p. 34)
The melding together of the discourses of markets with education are also evident in
advertisements like Frequent Flyer? (see Figure 5)20. The three listed items in Frequent Flyer?,
“International education, Cash in your network and $115 ++neg package” are a crude
illustration of these discursive links. A closer reading reveals the subject position created by
this discourse is that of an entrepreneur. The implicit message here is that international
education is simply another export commodity and selling education is no different from
selling other goods or services. A few articles such as Dark Side to Export Boom, report on the
problems which are arisen from an export approach to international education. For example,
the skewed demand for Business courses and non-research degrees has reduced Australia’s
capacity as a ‘knowledge nation’ (Illing, 2001b, p. 34). However, they have a subordinated
status in comparison to the ‘boom’ stories of commercial success.
Also under the aegis of ‘the economic’ were a series of reports on the financial crisis facing
Australian universities: Ups and downs in bottom line (Moodie, 2002) and Cash cures for campus
blues, (Marginson, 2000). The failed corporate ventures of universities also received some
mention: Melbourne University Private21, Melbourne IT and Anutech, the Australian
20. Frequent Flyer? appeared as an advertisement in the Higher Education section of the Australian newspaper on 11 July 2001.
21. Commenced in 1998 as the offspring of its Sandstone parent, Melbourne University Private received considerable publicity when it failed to make the rich profits anticipated at its inception. It was subse-quently merged with the profit making Melbourne Enterprises Initiative (MEI) amidst reports of an impending insolvency. In a move aimed symbolically at flexing its regulatory arm, the state govern-ment of Victoria has initiated a review to ascertain Melbourne University Private’s eligibility for con-tinued accreditation as a university in light of its limited research output and student enrolments (In 2000, it enrolled only 101 students (Madden, 2001a).
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National University’s commercial arm. Reporting on universities and their staff was largely
ambivalent and only occasionally sympathetic. News items like, Unis ‘more than pay their way’
highlight the public good function of higher education through observations like this one –
“the state receives an 11.5% return on its investment on university trained professionals”22
(Illing, 2002, p. 27). Notably, this public good function is expressed in economic terms.
Similarly sympathetic are articles like Student jam drives staff into overload where issues such as
declining staff numbers and funding cuts are highlighted (Illing, 2001a, p. 35). By far and large
though, these types of articles are less frequent. The more common trend is to discuss key
issues such as underfunding in terms of the foibles of university unions: Union to limit use of
casuals, (Madden, 2001b); or as a collective failure of universities to manage their budgets: Unis
warned of fiscal breaches (Lawnham, 2002).
When they do appear, articles like Unis ‘more than pay their way’ and other such reports, do not
receive the ‘headline’ treatment reserved for items such as Degrees in the Pipeline (Richardson
and Lawnham, 2001, p. 31, see Figure 6) and Town and Gown (Richardson, 2001b, p. 21) both
of which appeared on the front page23. Degrees in the Pipeline announced Edith Cowan
Figure 5: Frequent Flyer?
22. Benefits such as reduced welfare dependency and the reduced propensity for crime among the uni-versity educated were also noted.
23. Paradoxically, a report on the findings of investigation, The Commercialisation of Public Sector Research was modestly sized and situated in the last few pages of the newspaper. Its findings, that the U.S. produced some 27 times more spin-offs for each US$100 million of research expenditure than Australia, is premised in the discourse of academic entrepreneurialism. It was noted that Australia would need to generate ten times the number of licences and spin-off companies to compete with the U.S. (Illing 2001c).
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University’s introduction of the Bachelor of Surf Science and Technology. The layout, site and
presentation of this feature work together to make this a ‘major’ story. Its primary meaning
resides in its ‘feel-good’ quality. It merges the twin discourses of leisure with education and
applauds “...[the] commitment by academics to offer rigorous subjects in which students are
interested”. The female Dean of Regional and Professional Studies is pictured dressed in
corporate attire, complete with handbag and high-heels, holding a surfboard silhouetted
against blue skies and a sandy beach. The valorisation of news items like this can only serve
to reduce the importance of more serious challenges facing higher education.
A second discursive strand which appeared with some regularity in news reports was the ‘dot.
edu’ discourse. The linking of technology, markets and internationalisation is common to both
media reports and to institutional plans. The Universitas 21 initiative is one example where
the discourses of e-education, profits and international education are joined together.Together
with institutional plans, these news items help to construct the ‘virtualisation of education’ as
a logical, inevitable and progressive development within education:
• Web of learning is expanding (Australian, 2001, p. 32)
• Bouquets for online learning (Richardson, 2001a)
• Hooked with an online lure (Roberts, 2001, p. 37)
• Deal opens for global uni (Madden, 2001d, p. 38).
• University opens window to a new world (Gottliebsen, 2001, p.34)
Figure 6: Degrees in the Pipeline
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• E-uni recruits more paying members (Madden, 2001d, p. 27)
• Students attracted to dot com degrees (Australian, 2000a);
• Plug for e-learning network (Richardson, 2002, p. 36)
• Online Masters bucks tradition (Madden, 2001e, p. 36)
• E-learning is the only way ahead (Spender and Steward, 2000).
University opens window to a new world, which reported on the Universitas 21 initiative, typifies
the type of laudatory coverage given to ‘e-education’. It describes Universitas 21 as “one of the
world’s most ambitious higher education initiatives”.
The combination of a publisher with a US$6 billion (A$11.64 billion) turnover and
between 16 and 18 of the world’s best universities is unique and confirms that while the
dot.com stock market boom may be dead, the re-writing of the business landscape
using internet-based technology continues rapidly (Gottliebsen, 2001, p. 34).
The article links education and business discourses unproblematically to construct a positive
image of the online university. There is no discussion as to how technology will deliver
improved learning outcomes for students. The sole references to students are in terms of the
projected demand: 1 million students. Finally, advertisements like Online learning in a
borderless market suggest the endorsement of state instrumentalities in the virtualisation of
education and the strategic use of this discourse to promote the education export industry.
Reporting on international students largely took three forms: their “insatiable” demand for an
Australian education, immigration fraud (No entry under false pretences), the issue of ‘soft
marking’ (Marking row leads to QUT inquiry; Marking inquiry exposes glitches) and declining
academic standards (Marks and Sparks)24. In the lead up to both state and federal elections, a
series of rhetorical strategies were used in news reports to position ‘Asian students’ as
powerful entities who deploy their power as consumers of Australian education to discipline
the democratic impulses of the broader Australian community. Articles such as Unis fear Asian
Student Backlash (see Cole, 2001), impose a powerful subjectivity onto the ‘Asian student’ who
is able to discipline ‘fearful’ universities. The article discusses the impact of popular support
for the One Nation party on institutional efforts to recruit international students.
To what extent are academics, who face large teaching and administrative workloads,
vulnerable to the ‘othering’ practices depicted in some parts of the media discourses? Judging
by the statements listed below, some academics equate the presence of international students
24. see Boucher (2001), Illing, (2001d) Lawnham, (2001c).
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in Australian universities with declining academic standards and the loss of their professional
integrity:
...in the eyes of many academics a good service for the fee paying clients is the same
thing as prostituting your academic standards for the sake of a dollar...
...it is a common claim among academics that overseas students are accepted under
spurious entrance criteria ahead of qualified students then herded through courses
despite inadequate performance so that they can make way for the next lot of milch
cows. Another common grumble is that paying for their degrees gives them unrealistic
expectations of passing. (from Degrees of Doubt, Armitage, 1996, p. R01)
This and the statements below work to position international students against Australian
academics and students. International students are conferred with a powerful subjectivity –
their power resides in their capacity to ‘buy’ degrees and they are observed to have powerful
advocates within their institutions:
In the campus international offices that recruit them, international students have
powerful advocates which local students lack. These offices have power because they
bring in money: between $200 and 300 million a year in total... It is perfectly normal for
the international office to intervene when international students are failing... (ibid).
4.4 Concluding Comments
This chapter described and analysed the macro-context of international education in
Australia. More particularly, it examined how key nation-state instrumentalities are
interpreting and negotiating the myriad forces and processes of globalisation. In closing, I
re-visit some of the key points which have emerged from the analysis of public discourses
about the Australian university sector.
I have shown that the ‘policyscapes’ which have shaped international education have been
intersected by ‘national interest’ considerations. Where containing communism and winning
allies was a key national desire in the educational aid phase, by the end of the 1980s, national
interest was framed by the demands of the national economy. International education was
thus propelled into the role of earning export revenue. Allied to considerations of national
interest was a neoliberal discourse which argued for corporatisation and deregulation of the
Australian public sector. State instrumentalities subsequently deployed a series of
governmental technologies such as national ‘quality’ policies to produce and sustain
‘market-friendly’ relations of power and knowledge.
That the market dominates is reinforced by media discourses on international education.
International education is discursively constructed as a tradeable export commodity which
has yielded ‘gold’ for Australia. At the same time, media discourses through their promotion
of online education are developing alternative understandings of what constitutes
international education. The largely hyperglobalist e-education discourse has married the
‘dot.edu’ and ‘dot.com’ phenomena to privilege such objects as: ‘business’, ‘technological
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progress’, ‘customer demand’, and ‘a global clientele’. Together, policy, academic and media
discourses construct the international student as a favoured ‘customer’ who seeks privileges,
an ‘uneducated other’ who has an ‘insatiable demand’ for things western and a duplicitous
character who is involved in immigration fraud and ‘soft marking’ scandals.
To conclude, a discourse of national interest has been influential in shaping
power/knowledge relations within international education. Various institutional reforms
have been undertaken in the interest of national competitiveness, producing the higher
education export industry as the dominant expression of international education. At the same
time, an older colonial text, premised on Australia as an educator of Asia and Asians remains
in place, along with a national fear of being swamped by the ‘other’. The end result has seen
the development of a dominant ‘brand’ of international education which has continued to
endorse cultural singularities in knowledge production despite some evidence of creative and
transformative work aimed at challenging the twin hegemonies of the market and
monoculturalism.
In the next chapter, I examine discourses of international education by two of Australia’s key
competitors within the global market, the United Kingdom and the United States. I start by
introducing the higher education contexts of both countries, and the economic, political and
cultural forces that have shaped the sector. This will be followed by a discussion of
internationalisation in the British and American higher education contexts.